Systems Leadership course

There is an increasing need for a more integrated approach to health and social care services in the UK; and internationally. This course is unique in addressing systems leadership challenges faced by leaders in both clinical and non-clinical roles. It’s designed to develop the knowledge and skills; you need to lead across services; and sectors, and provide person-centred care for service users.

It will provide you with a grounding in the principles and practice of systems leadership, allowing you to take the next steps in your career and thrive in an evolving health and social care environment.

You’ll develop the skills you need to build relationships and collaborate effectively across boundaries, as well as to tackle complex problems.

Who is it for?

This course is for anyone working in a health and social care setting, both in clinical and non-clinical roles, who needs to work and lead across professional, organisational and sector boundaries. It’s suitable whether you’re already in a leadership position, or want to move into a leadership role.

Benefits

Develop the skills you need to progress as a leader, working across systems to introduce integrated care. You can make a difference. Applying your skills will help improve the quality of care, performance, efficiency, and management and leadership within health and social care organisations.

This short course module is designed to be flexible in allowing you to study and reach your goals at your own pace. Our health CPD courses are credit-bearing modules that contribute to a University degree or award.

Transfer course credits towards postgraduate taught degree

As a health care professional, once you've completed this course you could offset 30 credits as part of a postgraduate programme, continuing your study with further modules to make up a Postgraduate Certificate (PGCert) 60 credits, Postgraduate Diploma (PGDip) 120 credits or Master of Science (MSc) 180 credits qualification (all credits must be awarded within five years of study commencing).

This course focuses on developing the skills you need to succeed in health and social care leadership roles. It’s about understanding systems, building relationships and collaborating across services to solve problems that can’t be tackled by a single service or profession.

The course content includes:

• The care system, the challenges facing health and social care and the need for new ways of working to tackle these
• Critically evaluating the complexities and challenges of leading across sector, organisational and professional boundaries
• The theory and practice of systems leadership, stakeholder engagement, influencing others, managing complex change and dealing with risk and uncertainty
• Synthesising and applying systems thinking, organisational development and change management approaches, theories and tools.

By the end of this course, you’ll be able to:

• Effectively use your influencing and collaboration skills to lead across systems
• Use information more effectively to design and plan integrated services
• Understand systems thinking and relevant theories and tools to help you analyse problems
• See an improvement in your presentation, communication, team working and influencing skills
• Engage and collaborate with stakeholders across a wide range of services and areas, including service users, carers, and staff from other health and social care professions and related services
• Take a reflective approach to your leadership and learning.

Teaching

This course is taught over one academic term of approximately 10 weeks. You’ll attend 30 hours of lectures and ten hours of seminars during this time.

Our approach to teaching is experiential and practical. You’ll apply the theory to real-world case studies. Our teaching team includes health and social care professionals and academics, as well as leadership experts from the Bayes Business School.

You’ll also hear from external experts and leaders who are working across health and social care.

You’ll be encouraged to bring your own experiences into the classroom, which provides a forum to explore the challenges you face and the opportunity to share and discuss these with other professionals.

Assessment

There are two assessments for this course:

• A 4,500-word systems leadership strategy plan or proposal that applies the theories and tools you’ve learned on the course to a specific challenge or problem that you have, or might come across, in your profession al life. This accounts for 75% of your mark
• A reflective blog on your own professional practice, containing a series of posts with a combined length of 2,000 words. This accounts for 25% of your mark.

Award

This course will give you 30 academic credits, which counts towards your CPD. It’s also one of the core modules on our new MSc Leading Integrated Care.

You can use the academic credits to work towards a Postgraduate Certificate (60 credits), a Postgraduate Diploma (120 credits) or the entire MSc (180 credits).

Credits

This course is worth 30 credits toward eligible programmes.

You need to be working in a health and social care setting, either in a leadership role or with ambitions of moving into leadership in the sector.

English requirements

If your first language is not English, one of the following is required:

• A first degree from a UK university
• A first degree from an overseas institution recognised by City, University of London as providing adequate evidence of proficiency in the English language, for example, from institutions from Australia, Canada or the United States of America.
• International English Language Test Service (IELTS) a score of 7.0 is required with no subtest below 7.0
• Pearson Test of English (Academic) score 72 required
• TOEFL 100 overall with 24 in Writing, 20 in Listening, 19 Reading and 20 Speaking
• Other evidence of proficiency in the English language, which satisfies the board of studies concerned, including registration with your professional regulator.